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Portuguese auteur Rocha delivers a piece of space horror that may seem a bit too indebted to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien on a first viewing but watching it a second time reveals there is certainly more going on in Dedalo than simple homage.

Rocha’s accomplished short has the feel of a scene that either opens a feature film or occurs very late in its story.

They Will All Die in SpaceWritten & Directed by Javier Chillon
2015, Spain

Moving into the darker side of science fiction after his comedic short Decapoda Shock (2011), auteur Chillon delivers a great piece of space horror with a grim tone reminiscent of many American science fiction feature films of the early 1970s.

Some viewers might be initially thrown off by Chillon’s decision to shoot in black & white but it is ultimately a very effective choice.

This is Turkish auteur Evrenol’s last stand-alone horror short before entering the world of feature filmmaking and it is an audacious one. Baskin is a gruesome, nightmarish and bloody instant classic of short-form terror.

Evrenol made a highly regarded feature version of Baskin in 2015 that takes the story in a slightly more surreal direction and has recently completed his latest horror film Housewife.

This is a visually striking, enigmatic piece of cinematic terror that fans of Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 debut feature Cube and Kristoffer Aaron Morgan’s great 2011 short No Way Out will adore.

While it might be tempting to classify Curve as the type of short film that comes off as the first scene of longer story, the short actually works best as the puzzling and self-contained piece of short-form horror that it is.

A migrant field worker decides to seek a better life but is thrown into a living Hell as she is attacked by flesh-eating creatures in this slick and gory short.

Florida-based filmmakers Andres Meza-Valdes and Diego Meza-Valdes previously made the horror shorts The Room (2007), Halfway (2009), Play Dead (2011) and Haunt Ed (2012) but Boniato is by far their most effective and accomplished work to date.

Two well-meaning men pick up a highly distressed woman who appears to be lost then discover it is possible that no good deed goes unpunished in this very well made horror short that’s anchored by an excellent acting performance by Claudia Graf. She is a potent, horror genre- encased glimpse at the devastating effects of sexual violence.

The Last HalloweenDirected by Marc Roussel
Written by Marc Roussel & Mark Thibodeau
2013, Canada

A group of costumed children go door to door in a ruined neighborhood carrying bags of candy and some dark secrets in The Last Halloween.

This excellent apocalyptic short film that had a very successful festival run shows both the external and internal devastation caused by the end of the world.

Filmmaker Roussel had previously made the award-winning 2010 horror short Remotebut TheLast Halloween is a more accomplished and effective piece of work that also happens to feature the welcome presence of Canadian character actor Julian Richings.

In the massive and ever-growing world of horror shorts, a film has to be unique to stand out and TheLast Halloween is definitively unique.